


Escape

by imaginary_golux



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 14:09:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Demeter thinks her daughter should be grateful for the months above ground.  Kore counts the hours until she can be Persephone again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape

Demeter thinks that Persephone should be grateful to be brought out of that dark prison of the earth where Hades dragged her. Demeter thinks that Persephone should be glad to become Kore again, to scatter flowers in her wake and dance in her mother’s footsteps and be innocent again.

Persephone is not grateful. The dark Underworld is not a prison to her; the vast dim plains of the dead hold no horror for her. She is not glad to be Kore again, to watch the flowers bloom at her footsteps, to become again her mother’s shadow – she who is Queen of the Dead! She who rules dark Hades himself! She who is more beautiful than Aphrodite, more powerful than Hera, before whose shrines the flowers never die – _she_ should be glad to be a handmaiden again? No, she is not grateful.

But there are rules, even for goddesses, and so Persephone puts on her old name again, dances her old steps again, fawns upon her mother as her mother so desires, and speaks no word of complaint. But she waits, eager as a hound upon a leash, until the Equinox – until she can escape.

Then, oh, then! Then she goes dancing down the long road to her husband’s halls, leaving Kore and flowers and sunlight behind, and rejoices as she passes into darkness. For there at the end of the road is Hades on his pale throne, tall and menacing as he has ever been and ever will be, and he is all Persephone has ever wanted. He chose her, those long years ago, and she chose him, and each year she chooses him again.

Each year she kneels before him on his pale throne, and each year he stands and lifts her to her feet and seats her on the throne, and calls his subjects to acclaim their queen. Each year he sits contented at her feet as she greets old friends and learns what has passed in the dark realm in the months gone by. Each year she stands, audiences at last at an end, and leads him through long hallways to their bedchamber.

She knows he does not sleep here when she is gone. No; he sleeps in a little chamber near the throne-room, with a bed barely long enough for his frame, for when she is not here he buries himself in his duties and does not wish to sleep. And so this first night home she welcomes him again into their bed with warm kisses and warmer embraces, with murmured words of love so long put aside and now revived. He is not a man of many words, her husband, but she does not need words to know how he has missed her – not when he touches her like she is fragile and precious, kisses her like he needs her more than air. She knows he loves her, and she knows, too, as she twines herself around him like a vine about a tree, clinging to him for dear life, or so it seems, that he knows that she loves him, too.

Kore is a virgin, and so it is that every year Persephone offers up her maidenhead to her husband, and every year he takes great care that she shall have no pain in the losing of it; and he is skilled indeed with his long pale fingers and his clever, wordless tongue. Persephone looks forward to this night all through the long sunlit months: to his hands upon her breasts and sides and thighs, to his teeth so gentle and so dangerous upon her throat, to his manhood proud and glorious in her hands, and the hissing breaths between his teeth as she strokes him.

And more than all of these, Persephone looks forward to the moment when he comes to rest within her, still as death for long moments save that he cannot stop kissing her, long biting kisses that say _Welcome_ , and _I missed you_ , and _I love you so_. And then the moment ends and he is moving again, thrusting into her in long sleek movements which make her arch and cry out and rake her nails along his back, and this is what she should be grateful to escape?

When they are spent and sated, Persephone curls within her husband’s arms and smiles into the darkness, and Hades holds her close and falls into peaceful sleep; and now, at last, Persephone is grateful to be home.


End file.
